If you’re one of the guys like me who go faithfully to the gym three or four times a week, I’m sure you’ve shared my frustration when you’ve busted your hump to raise your weight threshold and then watch some built-like-a-brick shithouse guy who you know is juicing (i.e., taking steroids in heavy duty, illegal doses) and probably has a set a balls the size of peanuts, sit down on the same machine, lower the weight to half what you just pressed, do twenty faggy reps and move on, muscles bulging like some gay God.

Yea, I thought of taking steroids myself, which either one of the personal trainers at the gym or my new body builder/financial planner could sell me, but I just couldn’t stomach sticking a needle in my butt every day. So, after skipping those ads in the weekly bar rags for rejuvenation centers (not legal in most places except for the Wild Wild East known as South Florida), I decided to give them a second look. It sounded like testosterone, Mr. T, was the fountain of youth that would max my results in the gym and give me the lean mean look I coveted. Among other benefits. My financial guy confirmed that most guys’ T levels drop after 30, obviously a major problem in America, eclipsed only by the federal deficit; thus the need to find it elsewhere. So I figured it was time to trot my ass up to the northern fringes of Palm Beach County to see what all the voodoo was about.

Now, I’m sure I wasn’t the first or five hundredth fag to visit the Life Enhancement Center and I know Josh, my “consultant,” a handsome, humpy, thirty something, breezy, fast talking surfer type who was a Center client himself, knew exactly why I wanted the stuff – to beef up. But that wasn’t a legitimate enough medical reason for the Center docs to write a script.

So, first came the survey for which Josh practically set up the answers. Not sleeping well? Yep. Lacking energy? Sure. Libido weak? You betcha. Next I paid three hundred bucks for blood work at a nearby lab which the Center either owned or got a kick-back from. It confirmed what I knew from the last physical with my gay M.D. in Lauderdale: I was as healthy as a horse (no cholesterol, sugar, blood pressure issues, negative for HIV, etc., etc.). But, surprise, surprise, my testosterone levels were in the sewer. Thank you, Gay God! I think.

The stuff was a topical that came in a pump dispenser like skin cream ($90 bought you a two month supply) and once a day, after you showered, since it took 3 to 5 hours for the shit to enter your bloodstream, you were supposed to squirt a dose on the back of your forearm and rub your forearms together til it was gone. Again, since Josh read my real agenda – wanting to look hot for whatever sexual animal I wanted to snare – he also got the Center doc to prescribe a kosher dose of Stanozolol, (a steroid, by God!) you took just before working out to give you more stamina and endurance and which the guys at the gym told me would give me that wet dream “cut” look. At five bucks a dose, it was the most expensive sugar cubes I’d ever sucked on – but hey, what’s money? As long as my Visa card didn’t self-implode.

As I was ready to head back onto I-95, my wonder drugs tucked away in a paper bag like a McDonald’s burger, Josh pronounced his final two caveats:

The stuff needs time to kick in, and I wouldn’t see any visible changes in my physique or demeanor for a good month; and because of the higher doses of Mr. T and especially Mr. S, I needed to take hefty daily handfuls of fish oil, calcium and zinc supplements, along with a good multi-vitamin so my kidneys or liver didn’t turn to mush.

Three months after I started my testosterone therapy plus, I definitely saw a difference in how much I was pressing at the gym (I was able to up the ante every time I went) and, most importantly, in my bathroom mirror. I had always had a good build but now I saw broader shoulders, bigger arms, a bigger neck, broader back and – shit – for the very first time in my life as a 5 foot six kinda of stocky guy, a six pack! Mr. T also helped with weight control, and while I certainly didn’t need it, I think my hairy body was even getting, well, hairier.

On the negative side, I really felt no dramatic change in my energy level (except when I was at the gym and had just popped one of my five buck sugar cubes), and my libido was about the same. (I mean how horny can one horny guy get?)

I also found that my Russian temper, that I definitely inherited from my mother’s side, and which I was able to control most of the time, now tripped into overdrive at the slightest provocation. Like the time, just after the earthquake in Haiti, I was strolling out of a local Walgreens, and sitting at the exit was a table of gussy-upped Haitian women looking for a donation. My response was to yell on the top of my lungs, “How about practicing some birth control down there first, huh?”

Or the time I nearly got into a fist fight with some old fuck (I know, look who’s talking) who was ahead of me in the 20 items or less aisle at Wal-Mart because he had 21 items – yep I started counting them as he took them out of his basket.

At about this time I was shopping around for new health insurance to bring my deductible down and saw Blue Cross would sell me a policy at almost half of what my Aetna coverage was costing me. As part of its app process, I needed to undergo more lab work which happened just a few weeks after my blood work at Life Enhancement. I thought I’d pass with no problem and so was shocked that Blue Cross rejected my app because my good cholesterol was below standards. Out of curiosity, I called Life Enhancement and Josh confirmed that can happen when you’re taking Mr. T and Mr. S. If I wanted to stop the stuff and OD on pistachios and niacin – the no flush variety – for a few weeks, I could maybe reapply. But, hell, what was more important, looking buffed or getting a break on my insurance?

Eventually I switched to a local doc and testosterone pellets that are inserted just beneath the skin above one of the cheeks of your butt. Unlike the cream which you need to administer daily and must be absorbed into the skin, the pellets last about six months and give you a continuous feed of the hormone right into the bloodstream. All without thinking about it. And when that research came out recently indicting T therapy as contributing to cardiovascular disease, Doc poo-pooed it and handed another seemingly reputable research article that refuted Mr. T as the culprit.

But my problem is more immediate: what the fuck do you do when you feel perpetually horned up, the web or app boys are too strung out on meth or their jobs or their egos to “cooperate” in your hour of need, and all your favorite porn has gone stale?